On Tuesday in Chisinau, demonstrations called for government subsidies for winter energy bills.
ADVERTISEMENTFresh protests in Moldova's capital were organised on Tuesday to demand the government subsidise energy bills and ''not involve the country in the war''.
The thousands of protesters who took to the streets in Chisinau were organised by a group calling itself Movement for the People. They are supported by Moldova's Russia-friendly Shor Party, which holds six seats in the country's 101-seat legislature.
Demonstrators waved Moldovan flags and honked horns, with many calling for the country's president to step down. “Down with Maia Sandu!” they chanted, “Down with the dictatorship!”.
Dozens of coaches had bussed in protesters from around the country, temporarily causing traffic jams as hundreds of police deployed to bolster security checked vehicles entering the capital.
The Shor Party leader, the exiled Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor, accused police of trying to “thwart the peaceful rally."
“Fighting one’s own people is the last refuge of tyrants and the beginning of their downfall,” said Shor, who is named on a US State Department sanctions list as working for Russian interests.
It is the second anti-government rally held in Chisinau in two weeks and comes amid growing concerns about attempts to destabilise Moldova, Ukraine’s neighbour.
On 13 February, President Sandu outlined what she claimed was a plot by Moscow to overthrow the government in order to put the nation “at the disposal of Russia,” and to derail it from its course to one day join the 27-nation EU. Russia strongly rejected her claims.
The Shor Party also initiated a series of anti-government protests which last fall rocked Moldova - a European Union-candidate member since last June - as it struggled to manage an acute energy crisis after Moscow dramatically reduced natural gas supplies.
Around the same time, Moldova’s government asked the country’s Constitutional Court to declare the Shor Party illegal. The country’s anti-corruption prosecutors’ office alleged the protests were partly financed with Russian money.
The protest also comes a day after Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Service, SIS, said it had expelled two foreign nationals who were caught carrying out “subversive actions” to destabilize Moldova. The SIS said that the pair were actively monitoring and documenting social and political processes in Moldova, including protests it said were “organized in the capital by certain political forces.”